This book aims to tell the stories and struggles of and many wrong-known truths about more than 23.000 Syrian Refugees who started to live in Turkey as of year 2011 through the works and studies of a project group and a project leader who touched their lives between 2016-2020. Our project that we started with a dream of the project designer has finally come true. To make the world a better, more habitable place is in our hands. We have realized 3 million Syrians and 3 million trees project with the ideal and conscious to live like a forest all together in peace and Qualified Employment Project with the financing support of GİZ, the German Society for International Cooperation. In this project with the aim to make economic contribution to our Syrian guests and to make them take part in active business life, 3.800 Syrian people and 1.260 Turkish people have participated in sapling planting and vocational training. It was the primary goal of our project to plant one tree for each of 3.700.000 million Syrians who have migrated to Turkey, namely for each tree which was chopped down, and to establish emotional bond between the citizens on this country and to contribute to Green Europe Project. Another goal of our project is to contribute to sustainable employment. Within the scope of project works, we performed many field studies in different areas. In all academic studies carried out up until today, human subjects were selected generally from refugee camps and those studies remained as periodical studies. 2.560 human subjects selected for this study have been selected from among Syrians trying to live in Gaziantep and Istanbul and working within the scope of the project; this is a unique study in its field in terms of participants, same questions were asked in different periods of time within 4 years and relevant changes were observed. This study not only includes the evaluations of the Syrian beneficiaries but also reflects the views of our 1.260 citizens from Gaziantep and Kilis provinces about Syrian Refugees. We hope that our studies will contribute to ones who carries out studies about refugees and to NGOs which develop projects for them. Our study begins with an introduction which includes an overall assessment of Syrian Refugees. We have included some stories from the field between chapters. Some of them gives many information in brief and with full of emotion about the matters that we wish to tell and try to write reams of writings. Second chapter contains a determination of state and fourth chapter contains the evaluation of problems that we determined as a result of field studies in which the same questions were asked to different Syrians within 3 years. Sixth chapter explains “Wrong-Known Truths” evolved from individual judgment to social judgment within 10 years. Knowing the truth by every segment of the society of those wrongs mostly used in social conflicts will be the most realistic common ground de-conflict environment. Seventh chapter contains the contents need to be known about “3 Million Syrians –3 Million Trees” Project. Other chapters contain the outcomes of Istanbul Survey, Gaziantep-2018 (Syrian Beneficiaries) and Gaziantep-2019 Field Studies and “Our Citizens’ Perception of Syrian Refugees”. Sixteenth chapter contains the field studies carried out within the scope of Qualified Employment Project-2020. Last chapter of the book contains a return project. In all sections of the book, we explained the current conditions evenhandedly and in a way to cover all the relevant parties. The results of our survey study in which we have measured the perceptions of our citizens about Syrian refugees indicated the necessity of a vision regarding the repatriation. Large segment of the society expects the repatriation of the Syrian refugees. In our survey, only 8,6% of the participants believe that all the Syrians will return to their countries after the end of civil war in Syria and 43,1% believe that none of them will return. If they stay in Turkey, most of the participants, approximately 81,6%, object to conferring Turkish citizenship to Syrian refugees. Project outputs develop solutions not only for repatriation but also for many problems identified in problems section. “Swallows are refugee/migratory birds. They fly very fast. During the migration, hundreds of swallows are caught by the storm and die. While the swallows which healthily complete the migration process fly through the warm sky, they remember their deceased friends and scream with pain and anger. Syrians are not half as swallows. They cannot grieve for their lost lives in order not to disturb other people.” (Ahmet Ümit, Swallow Scream, p. 289-290)

Syria has been the country of origin of the largest number of asylum seekers in the EU every year since 2013. Given the long-standing existence of stateless communities in Syria, it is evident that there are stateless refugees among those displaced by the con ict and ending up in Europe. Against this background, this report explores the treatment of stateless refugees from Syria within the European asylum system, outlining the particular challenges they face and discussing related law and policy gaps. Building on existing research about the situation of stateless refugees and those at risk of statelessness in the neighbouring Middle Eastern countries, this study focuses on the ‘Greece corridor’ - the most common route for Syrians coming to Europe - as a framework through which to analyse the experiences of stateless Syrians in the EU. Within this ‘corridor’, the research focuses on two countries – Greece and the Netherlands – where in-depth interviews were conducted with stateless Palestinians and stateless Kurds from Syria who have arrived in Europe within the recent migration ow. eir testimonies help us to better understand the implications of the approach of relevant stakeholders, policies and procedures to the treatment of stateless refugees from Syria.

Since the beginning of 2011, the political situation in Syria has consistently found itself at the top of news broadcasts, newspaper headlines and the agendas of politicians. Little known, however, has been the struggle of the Kurds in Syria to have their voice heard on the political stage and to have equitable access to both economic and political resources. This examination of contemporary Kurdish politics in Syria therefore concentrates on the Syrian-Kurdish political parties which operate illegally in the country. It is these parties and their political leaders, such as Abd -al-Hakim Bashar of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria and Abd al- Hamid Darwish of the Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party in Syria, who, despite state sanctions, have attempted to promote their political agendas and to bring about change for the approximately three million Kurds that currently reside in the country. Harriet Allsopp examins Kurdish political parties, how they have tried to negotiate their illegality and how they have developed since 1957 when the first one was established. BY 1960, all political parties were banned, and the Kurds found themselves under increased political pressure from the central state. From 1960 until the present day, this prohibition has been the official position of successive Syrian governments, despite a brief political opening upon the accession of Bashar al-Asad in 2000. It is through a systematic analysis of the history of Kurdish political parties that Allsopp highlights how, on the eve of the Syrian uprising, they were in the midst of a crisis, widely seen as ineffectual and out of touch. Nevertheless, out of the uprising, Kurdish politics has appeared to take on a much more cohesive and effective character. The Kurds of Syria eplores the fundamental issues of minority identity and the concept of being 'stateless' in a turbulent region, as well as the organisation of political parties in Syria, making it vital for all those researching the politics of the modern Middle East.

This book examines the changing demographic situation of Syrian refugees and the host community in Turkey, one of the major refugee hosting countries in the world, relying on a recent representative dataset. Conflicts and the resulting unrest force people to flee their countries and take refuge in foreign lands. Such refugee movements across the world have increased significantly in recent times. Turkey accounts for the greatest refugee population in the world today. This has drastically impacted the Turkish demographics, leading to different demographic situations in refugee communities in the country. This book presents an in-depth research on the impact of forced displacement on the demographic behaviour of Syrian refugees in Turkey in general, and more specifically the way transformed family structures, unregistered children, fertility behaviours and early marriages impacted their lives. The book also contributes to the existing knowledge and discourse on refugee integration by shedding light on their experiences related to access to labour market opportunities and education opportunities, wellbeing and mobility. It also helps in linking demography of Syrian community to the socio-economic challenges in Turkey by means of incorporating crucial demographic variables into the analysis. Offering valuable insights into various dimensions of life, this book has an interdisciplinary appeal and will thus be a key resource for academics and scholars of demography, refugee studies, migration studies and sociology. It will also be a valuable and unique reference work for people in governments, international agencies and non-governmental organizations.

From genocide, forced displacement, and emigration, to the gradual establishment of sedentary and rooted global communities, how has the Armenian diaspora formed and maintained a sense of collective identity? This book explores the richness and magnitude of the Armenian experience through the 20th century to examine how Armenian diaspora elites and their institutions emerged in the post-genocide period and used “stateless power” to compose forms of social discipline. Historians, cultural theorists, literary critics, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists explore how national and transnational institutions were built in far-flung sites from Istanbul, Aleppo, Beirut and Jerusalem to Paris, Los Angeles, and the American mid-west. Exploring literary and cultural production as well as the role of religious institutions, the book probes the history and experience of the Armenian diaspora through the long 20th century, from the role of the fin-de-siècle émigré Armenian press to the experience of Syrian-Armenian asylum seekers in the 21st century. It shows that a diaspora's statelessness can not only be evidence of its power, but also how this “stateless power” acts as an alternative and complement to the nation-state.

Citizenship, Belonging, and Nation-States in the Twenty-First Century contributes to the scholarship on citizenship and integration by examining belonging in an array of national settings and by demonstrating how nation-states continue to matter in citizenship analysis. Citizenship policies are positioned as state mechanisms that actively shape the integration outcomes and experiences of belonging for all who reside within the nation-state. This edited volume contributes an alternative to the promotion of post-national models of membership and emphasizes that the most fundamental facet of citizenship—a status of recognition in relationship to a nation-state—need not be left in the 'relic galleries' of an allegedly outdated political past. This collection offers a timely contribution, both theoretical and empirical, to understanding citizenship, nationalism, and belonging in contexts that feature not only rapid change but also levels of entrenchment in ideological and historical legacies.

This book argues that citizenship is an inadequate solution to the problem of statelessness based on a critical investigation of the lived experiences of Kurdish and Palestinian diasporas in western Europe. It examines how statelessness affects identity formations, homelessness, belonging, non-belonging, otherness, voices, status, (non)recognition, (dis)respect, (in)visibility and presence in the uneven world of nation-states. It also demonstrates that the undoing of non-sovereign identities’ subjection to structural subalternization and everyday inferiorization requires rights in excess of the mere acquisition of juridical citizenship, which tends to assume national sameness. That assumption in turn involves sovereign practices of denial and assimilation of ethnic alterity. The book therefore highlights the necessity of de-ethnicizing and decolonizing unitary nation-states that are based on the politico-cultural supremacy of a single, “core” ethnicity as the sovereign legislator of the rules and regimes of national belonging and un-belonging. It therefore broaches questions of “majority” and “minority,” mobility, nationalism, home-making, equality, difference and universalism in the context of the nation-state and illustrates how stateless peoples such as Kurds and Palestinians endure and challenge their subordinate position in a hierarchical (geo-)political order and how in so doing remain bound by political otherness.

The refugee crisis that began in 2015 has seen thousands of refugees attempting to reach Europe, principally from Syria. The dangers and difficulties of this journey have been highlighted in the media, as have the political disagreements within Europe over the way to deal with the problem. However, despite the increasing number of women making this journey, there has been little or no analysis of women’s experiences or of the particular difficulties and dangers they may face. A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis examines women’s experience at all stages of forced migration, from the conflict in Syria, to refugee camps in Lebanon or Turkey, on the journey to the European Union and on arrival in an EU member state. The book deals with women’s experiences, the changing nature of gender relations during forced migration, gendered representations of refugees, and the ways in which EU policies may impact differently on men and women. The book provides a nuanced and complex assessment of the refugee crisis, and shows the importance of analysing differences within the refugee population. Students and scholars of development studies, gender studies, security studies, politics and middle eastern studies will find this book an important guide to the evolving crisis.

The Palestinian conflict has produced one of the most tragic refugee crises since World War II, with the number of refugees caused by the violence associated with the creation of the State of Israel numbering around 11 million in 2011. The much lauded first edition, in 1998, of The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law was the first book to comprehensively analyse the legal aspects of the Palestinian refugee crisis, yet the last two decades have seen multiple developments. New waves of conflict and displacement have affected Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, and there has been Israeli encroachment on Palestinian territory. Hamas has grown, and a schism has formed within the first Palestinian government. The so-called "Arab Spring" has impacted the life, fate, and legal status of thousands of Palestinian refugees. In international legal jurisprudence, change has been similarly rapid. In 2004, the International Court of Justice delivered a crucial advisory opinion on the Separation Wall, authoritatively elucidating the international legal framework applicable to the Israeli occupation. Numerous international human rights bodies and UN fact-finding missions have added their analysis to the mix. The possibility of the State of Palestine joining the International Criminal Court has spurred discussion relating to the applicability of international criminal law to Palestinian refugees. Clear, compelling, and authoritative, Lex Takkenberg and Francesca Albanese discuss the status quo both on the ground and in the courts, and pose future scenarios to come.